Saturday, July 30, 2011

I love Justonescarf's social media propaganda posters. He is selling his Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus propaganda posters on Etsy. Go buy one, hang it on your wall and show your loyalty to your favourite site in the Social Media War!

Red Balloon is a 13 minutes thriller short film complete with GCI directed by Alexis Wajsbrot and Damien Mace. Both worked in post-production visual effects and have done effects for Harry Potter and GI Joe. Red Balloon was shot with a team of 30 professionals including Jean Clement Soret (Danny Boyle's Colorist) for the grading.

The spread of internet and smartphones are changing the way Southeast Asians are consuming information. In Online Journalism in Southeast Asia, Klaus Bardenhagen and Madeleine Fulst with case studies from Singapore, Cambodia and Malaysia, analyze the latest trends and challenges.

This 1950s Military Vehicles Pictorial Dictionary features 101 black and white drawings of old tanks and army vehicles, armament and anti-tank weapons, power plant, electrical equipment, transmission, chassis, evacuation and firefighting equipment.

Baby doll artist Tracy Ann Lister has created a series of Harry Potter-themed baby dolls. The dolls are so lifelike, they even have veining and capillaries beneath the skin surface. They are filled with soft fibre for the cuddle factor and proportionally weighted to lay in your arms just like a real baby.

I wish this could be in English but here are the scanned images of the latest issue of Japanese toy magazine, Figure King featuring the Transformers: Dark of the Moon Japanese toy line and merchandise and interviews with Takara Tomy toy designers to commemorate the launch of the movie in Japan.

Boba Fett is looking for a change in career! He is hoping to land an engineering job but right now he's a professional street musician. In this video, he plays one of my favourite songs, The Man Who Sold the World, made famous by David Bowie and Nirvana.

Telegrafixs draws Tattooed Disney Princesses. Here's Show White! He says: "I think she is the best of the Princess Tattoos I've done so far. I removed her big shoulder sleeves, I always thought they made her really stiff and non-mobile. Gave her more of a 1920’s flapper cut and toned down her colors a little bit." Check out Jasmine and Ariel.

This motorbike from Thailand is totally out of this world. Roongrojna Sangwongprisarn used recycled materials from old cars and bicycles to create an awesome monster motorbike sculpted to look like the scary alien creatures from the Alien movies. Amazing detail!

Lady loves sewing and crafting so armed with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a Master’s degree in Statistics, she opens an uber-nerd Etsy store to sell her Distribution Plushies. All her plushies are made of pre-washed tan flannel stuffed with poly-fil. The features are either machine or hand embroidered.

Matthew J Parsons is passionate about imagery as a form of expression and communication. Here he combines the two most feared cartoon villains of the 80s, Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Megatron from Transformers to form Skeletron.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Matthew Geyster has a cool Kickstarter project called the AstroClip. It is a simple attachment that mounts your iPhone 4 to any telescope with a 1.25" wide eye piece, allowing you to easily photograph the moon and other astronomical objects through the telescope. The test shots by Matthew look pretty good.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon official trailer remade scene by scene using characters from Toy Story 3. Watch it here and don't forget to catch the credits. Starring Buzz as the Astronaut, Ken as Sam, Barbie as Carlie, Optimus as Toy Optimus and Bumblebee as Toy Bee.

Frii is a recycled plastic bike designed by Dror Peleg, a design student. It is a single speed city bike made with various recycled plastics using injection molding technology. Dror believes that compared to the construction of the traditional metal bicycle, the process of mass producing his plastic bike is less labor-intensive.

Aviation buff Cliff Muskiet visits local airline offices and meets people all over the world to help him obtain new stewardess uniforms for his Stewardess Uniform Collection. So far he has 1005 different stewardess uniforms from 408 airlines. He is hoping to make a book about his collection one day.

The folks from Cheapass Games are converting many of their older game titles into free versions. You can download these games, print them, and play them! I'm trying out Falling, a frenetic card game with an average play time of 90 seconds. The objective of the game is to hit the ground last. Sounds fun.

Shannon made a mold of E.T.'s head from an old wind-up E.T. toy for her awesome E.T ring. She says: "I noticed that the size of the head was perfect to make a ring out of it (like a skull ring, but instead of a skull, E.T.). So I took a quick mold of the head using silicone putty and then cast it in plastic."

Leave all your pancake making duties to this robot. Dude's Pancake Bot is made of Lego Mindstorms, Lego bricks and two Ketchup bottles. He writes: "The batter is made using Martha Stewart's Basic Pancake Recipe as the base. I sometimes add cinnamon or different berries for flavors or color."

Friday, July 22, 2011

Earthlings is a powerful and informative documentary about society’s treatment of animals, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix with soundtrack by Moby. This multi-award winning film by Nation Earth is a must-see for anyone who cares about animals or wishes to make the world a better place. Go watch it.

Jason has 490 scans, photographs and images of his McDonald's collection. He writes: "I started out having a novel fascination with the McDonaldland characters, but something urges me on to collect more and more of the stuff. Without any real intent, I've ended up collecting quite a bit of it."

Pioneer DJ Art Mix Tour is a unique fundraising program to benefit the VH1 Save The Music Foundation that brings together many of the world’s best DJs, urban artists and designers to create original works of art using Pioneer’s renowned industry standard CDJ-2000 digital music player.

James Charles turns dead presidents on US Dollar notes into colorfully amusing pop culture icons. He uses intricate cross-hatching to cover up the portraits of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and other presidents and turn them into characters like Col Saunders, Ronald McDonald, Frankenstein monster and more.

Stanford students have created the JediBot, a robot that can battle with "light sabers" against humans. It uses Microsoft Kinect sensor to detect objects in 3D space and it can swing its sword about once every two to three seconds.

What happens when all our books move online? Graphic designer Benjamin Shaykin explores: "With Lo-Res Books, I am interpreting my own library, reducing the books in my memory and on my shelves to their smallest digital selves. In this pixelated form, they become abstract, mere suggestions of books."

What would happen in the Harry Potter world if their spells didn't quite go the way they meant them to? Take a look at Harrey Podder and find out. An impressive parody animation by Stodoe Studios. Very funny too. After watching this, I can't wait for the official Harry Potter animated series.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Uniqlo Singsapore is selling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 T-shirts inspired by vintage graphics. There are seven designs to choose from. Each Harry Potter graphic T-shirt costs $24.90. The T-shirts are a collaboration between Warner Bros. Consumer Products and Uniqlo, the largest clothing retailer in Japan.

Jessica spots three fake Apple stores in China a few blocks from her house. She writes: "This was a total Apple store ripoff. A beautiful ripoff – a brilliant one – the best ripoff store we had ever seen. But some things were just not right: the stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn’t been painted properly."

PC Mag reviews Apple's new operating system, the Mac OS X Lion and it has good to things to say: "Lion is the best operating system ever made, and unless you have a strong reason for using anything else, you owe it to yourself to start enjoying its ease and power." You can download Mac OS X Lion from the Mac App Store.

Watch Space Shuttle Atlantis as it makes its historic landing, bringing an end to NASA's 30-year space shuttle programme. For the next few years, NASA will be relying on the Russians to ferry astronauts to the space station and back until a replacement US spaceship can be built by private-sector companies.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Antonio is excited about this gem of a find, the 1976 NASA Graphic Standards Manual. He writes: "Created by design firm Danne & Blackburn in 1975, this manual outlines the proper use of, in my opinion, one of the best brand identities of the last century." Someone please scan the whole manual.

Some dude has built Ravage from Transformers that transforms into a huge cassette that fits nicely in a briefcase. He writes: "Ravage stretches to get out, being folded up in a real pain in the ass!!! After a stretch, his missiles and machine guns are attached. Now he needs his mission details. The back panel comes of to reveal a secret panel."

I came across Coran Stone's works recently and boy, I'm impressed. He draws comic and cartoon superheroes and he does them real well. One of my favs is The Big Guns. He writes: "Just thought I'd take some of meh fav 80's cybernetic and robotic characters and temporarily team them up for no apparent reason other than kicking a multitude of ass."

Looks like Buzzinator won't be lonely after all. His maker Peter Clute, has given him a buddy. It's non other than the Woodinator! Peter used a Toy Story Woody doll and customised it to give it the Terminator look. It looks great alright but I'm not sure how long the two of them can remain buddies without tearing each other apart.

Fro has created these wonderful prints of all 7 of Voldemort's Horcruxes. A Horcrux is an object used to store part of a person's soul. In the Harry Potter books and movies, Voldemort splits his soul into 7 pieces with six in Horcruxes and the last reposing within his body.

Nicky is selling her Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy dolls knitting pattern: "Both Harry and Draco knit up on 4mm needles, using the double knitting yarn of your choice. They are wearing Hogwarts jumpers with the appropriate house colours on the trims, and school robes, which are removable."

Chipmunk is a quality turntable constructed of a solid Ash round, with Music Hall Audio belt-drive parts, tonearm, a metal platter, felt platter mat, and installed Music Hall Tracker cartridge. It is hand assembled and finished with hand-rubbed polyurethane and paste-wax.

I'm downloading Newermind, SPIN's tribute to the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind. For the tribute album, they tapped some of their favorite contemporary artists to cover all the 13 songs from Nevermind. Newermind is available as a free download now through July 25 via their Facebook Page.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

1965 is a political thriller based on and inspired by Lee Kuan Yew’s struggle for the independence of Singapore. Developed by Homerun Pictures, the film stars Tony Leung as the young Lee Kuan Yew. Maggie Cheung is also in the movie. No idea who's she playing but I reckon she's the young Mrs Lee. I think 1965 has the makings of a box office winner.

Dude aims to walk from Perth to Sydney in his Stormtrooper costume to raise awareness and money for the Starlight Foundation. Pics here. He's hoping to walk for 35-40 kilometres a day, 5 days a week. You can follow him on Twitter.

Russian language blog Show and Tell Pyongyang posts pictures of fake Lego sets from North Korea that come complete with Korean and English instructions. Closer inspection of the pics reveal that the Lego blocks are of really bad quality. Not surprising since they are probably made in North Korea.

Transformers fever has finally hit China! 13 giant structures from Transformers: Dark of the Moon measuring 8m high were installed at a 60,000 square-metre park in north-east China. Huge crowds had their pictures taken with Bumblebee and company which are believed to be on the site of a forthcoming Transformers theme park.

Find out how sounds effects designer Dominic Gibbs and the rest of the talented sound team of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 made the sound of the last movie in the Harry Potter saga. Video contains some cool behind the scenes footage and some clips from the actual movie that are not seen in the trailers.

Artist Otis Frampton collaborates with master Star Wars custom figures maker Sillof on this amazing Samurai Wars poster. He writes: "A few months ago I approached him with the offer of creating a movie poster-style image based on one of his custom Star Wars figure sets and he approved. I chose the Samurai Wars set."

Julie Smith is selling these adorable Girly Stormtrooper earrings on Etsy: "Who says Stormtroopers can't be pretty? I just love the juxtaposition of a tropical hot pink flower on this intimidating figure." If tropical pink is not your colour, she also sells the earrings in red rose.

Unicorns on Computer Paper drawn by Shawn Hollenbach when he was 10, have different powers, some with wings and some are even celebrities. He says, "These unicorns were drawn with love in the hopes to be developed into line of unicorns with other contemporary toys, like the Care Bears, My Little Ponies or the queen of branding, Barbie."

Single mum of 4 year old boy likes making toys. Here she makes a Little Kitchen: "My son's kitchen has been his favorite plaything since I made it, but not everyone has the space or funds for a big kitchen. So I present to you: my little kitchen. It has all the features of a big kitchen, but in a manageable, portable size."

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Producer, Director, DP, Editor. Works on documentaries, commercials and branded content. A Spurs fan, experienced astronomer and occasional ITK. I.Z. Reloaded covers news, pop culture, blogs, websites, gadgets, the fascinating and the weird from a Singapore perspective. The blog is a runner up in both the 2006 Weblog Awards (Best Asia Blog) and the 2004 Asia Blog Awards (Best Singapore Blog). Contact him at izreloaded[at]gmail[dot]com.